Costa Rica - Corazón de Jesús "Los Toños" Java

Brew Guide:

Best Brewed with: Filter

Lightest Roaster Influence: We're still developing our approach for the Java cultivar and indeed all those on the pointer end of the bean morphology - they have a tendency to tip. We're experimenting with softer start, more energetic ends and we're absolutely loving the progression in the roasting compared to last year's lot.

Best Rested: 3-4 weeks

Filter: 62g/L & 94°C, with rest we like to move down to 62g/L & 91°C

Espresso: 18g/48g 20-23. Turbo or soup ideal!

We’re tasting:

Super tropical and sweet aromatics - ripe papaya, alphonso mango and pineapple. In the cup it's got a candy-like sweetness - whilst hot, it's like strawberry hubba bubba, milk chocolate and a sweet but slightly boozy cherry liqueur. As it cools becoming more tropical and sweet - tinned pineapple + syrup, ripe banana, and a long tutti-frutti ice-cream finish. Syrupy, sweet, process-led, and delightfully fun!

Traceability

The Story

Costa Rica's micromill revolution began in the early 2000s, allowing small producers to process their own coffee rather than selling to large cooperatives or centralized mills. This shift enabled farmers to control processing methods, maintain lot separation, and capture more value from quality-focused production. Corazón de Jesús is emblematic of this movement, with the family gaining independence to experiment with fermentation and processing techniques, and capture more value for their coffee. This micromill revolution really set Costa Rica apart - for many years, the most cutting edge naturals and honey process coffees were coming out of CR, in a way that many origins are now only beginning to catch up to.

Jhon Alvarado Abarca and the Alvarado Fonseca family are first-generation coffee producers who established the Corazón de Jesús wet mill in November 2015. The family transitioned from growing vegetables to coffee in 2009, with their first notable harvest in 2012. They built their processing facility with virtually no budget, using borrowed equipment and hand-constructed drying beds for their initial harvest.

The family has achieved consistent success in Costa Rica's Cup of Excellence competitions since their first entry in 2021. Their trajectory includes fifth place in 2021, third place in 2022, second place in 2024, and an unprecedented sweep in 2025 with first place finishes in both washed and natural categories. The family currently manages five farms in the Brunca region: El Salitre, Los Toños, La Torre, Vista Paraiso, and La Cusuka. 
Corazón de Jesús processes coffee from all five family farms using a plethora of methods including the more traditional - washed, honey, natural, up to the higher intervention techniques - anoxic ("anaerobic"), and natural reposado/extended fermentation. The facility includes African raised beds with weather protection, climate-controlled fermentation spaces, hermetic tanks, and extensive drying patios. The family has gained a reputation for experimental processing and developing very precise fermentation protocols across their lots, both for individual varieties as well as the individual plots on the farms.

Focusing on this lot in particular - Los Toños sits at 1,700 metres in the spring-fed valleys of Chirripó's watershed, positioned between Costa Rica's two highest peaks where cool mountain air and volcanic soils create ideal conditions for quality coffee production. The farm's name carries multiple meanings: it references the previous owner who sold the property to the Alvarado family five years ago, honours Tono who works alongside Johnny as his right hand, and extends to Johnny's son (also named Tono) who is deeply involved in the operation. When the family acquired the land, it held old, underperforming coffee that was immediately removed and replanted with 3,000 Milenio seedlings from CATIE, an F1 hybrid that fruited within a year and subsequently placed third in competition. The plot now supports multiple cultivars including that Milenio alongside the Java featured in this lot, with varieties selected according to the specific microclimatic conditions across the 1500 to 1700 metre elevation range.

Java carries one of coffee's more circuitous origin stories and its name has caused considerable confusion for decades. In 1928, Dutch agricultural researcher P.J.S. Cramer travelled to Ethiopia (then known as Abyssinia) and selected seeds directly from estates there, bringing eleven selections back to Indonesia where seven were released for cultivation. One of these, designated AB3, was planted in East Java before spreading to Sumatra, where it became known locally as Abyssinia and valued for its distinctive longberry bean form and partial resistance to coffee leaf rust.

In the mid-20th century, AB3 travelled from Java to Cameroon via the Vilmorin company, where breeder Pierre Bouharmont spent nearly twenty years selecting for coffee berry disease tolerance and adaptability to smallholder production with low inputs before releasing it commercially in the 1980s under the name "Java" in reference to its Indonesian provenance. In 1991, CIRAD introduced the variety to Costa Rica with the intention of providing Central American farmers with a disease-resistant option, but it performed poorly at low elevations and was largely abandoned.

For twenty-five years Java remained overlooked in Central America until Panamanian farmers discovered its potential when planted at high altitude in volcanic soils, leading Panama to become the first country to officially recognise it in 2016. What had long been assumed to be a Typica selection based on its morphological similarities (slender cherries, upright "Christmas tree" growth habit, elongated beans) was revealed through World Coffee Research's genetic fingerprinting to be a direct Ethiopian landrace with no Typica lineage at all, placing it in the same category as Gesha as an "escapee" variety that bypassed the colonial Yemen-to-Java route entirely.

The variety requires high altitude to express its quality potential, performing best above 1600 metres where its disease resistance to both coffee leaf rust provides genuine agronomic advantage. For smallholders, Java offers a more manageable alternative to Gesha: it maintains better productivity at elevation, demonstrates greater resilience to environmental stress, and requires fewer inputs whilst still commanding premium pricing when properly cultivated, making it an economically viable option for quality-focused producers working with limited resources and infrastructure.

We featured two coffees from Corazón de Jesús in 2024: a natural Milenio lot in Colourful V5 and Java from Los Toños, and having first featured a Typica lot from the family, we're stoked to bring the Java from Los Toños back again - and it's an absolute stunner this year